A Saxophone Lesson with Master George Coleman

see i was listening to charlie parker i started listening to chad parker back in the day when i first started playing that's who i wanted to emulate recently i had the exceptional honor and good fortune to be able to meet up with master george coleman in his home on the lower east side of manhattan [Music] that kind of stuff and they require oh it's here hey my boy okay all right i'll see you in a while so he's on his way so he's in the neighborhood do you know how to tighten up that spring i can have a look at it see what i yeah take a look take a look and see if you can i don't know what it is but when i meet up with other saxophone players it usually begins with some sort of quick repair job so while we waited for another great saxophone player to arrive i took care of george's sticky g sharp can you guys tell me this here take a dollar bill and put in it and pull it through and i've done that and it's helped but it still goes back to this low g sharp this is a particularly sticky one oh yeah yeah i know man you want to at least be able to play a tune without having to stick on you yeah without without hitting it and you get a g rather than a g sharp you want to be able to play in the sharp keys right that's pretty weird man that should be good for a couple tunes okay well that's all we need in case you don't know george coleman is one of the greatest saxophone players in the history of jazz he's got an extensive discography having recorded on some legendary albums such as herbie hancock's maiden voyage and miles davis's seven steps to heaven in 2015 he was named an nea jazz master and he's still going strong here at 86 years old you know my chaps are not really like they used to be [Music] that's a great sound on that day with that mouth fish man yeah that's the hell of a mouthpiece right a few weeks earlier i had sent george one of these burning alto sax mouthpieces which he's been playing on have a listen to him shred over cherokee oh one of the best i i i haven't played i never played on my alto face like this yeah you can go down on lower register and everything comes out and uh and the high register too subtone is definitely an important part of george's sound concept as he explains but i i never did blast on the lord lord i always had a real like a soft uh sub tone sound yeah a very shallow dude oh i do [Music] all right september yeah now no gathering of saxophone players can be complete until we've discussed altissimo fingerings another a lot of ways of playing but this one comes out real good with just the a g and the right hand yeah f e and d that's how i play it too that's how you play it back in the oldest i used to play it with just the a and the g i think you could do that too yeah yeah how do you make that g that high g okay on alto i'm gonna do the f key you know the this one like a tenner g you add one yeah this one f k f and and then what else side b flat b flat okay oh yes yeah that's true that's a good true g now a fork g that i have used a b natural left hand g left hand f right hand and d right hand you know you got to feel comfortable with them you know you don't you can't think about what the fingering is going to be if i don't have to do this to make a note you don't use my foot my my hand both of my hands you know because you don't want to have it to be difficult with the fingers it's already hard it's it's difficult up there man you got to tighten up you know side note you can't just leave them out there you you can't just finger them no you got to chop some too you know i was asking eddie lockjaw about some of that high stuff cause he play all kind of before these young guys came out with that eddie locker was playing up there then back in his 30s and of course i had to ask george about his horns it's mark six do you know your serial number i don't know it but everybody they play they like they like it and i like it too sixty thousand sixty thousand something uh-huh i've had it at least maybe twenty or thirty years i got it from emilio lyons in boston yeah i had to play tenno because i was moving the bb king's blues band the armature was a little bit different you know you got to just you know get the armature together it was b.b king that bought you that santa saxophone yeah he did yeah i remember explicitly he bought it and i paid for it you know and then when i bought my mark six that i still have back in that day i bought it in 1958 i've been playing about since 52. when i went with max that's when i bought that one dude this i paid 244 dollars for it well it was 244th with the trade-in of martin that i had it's still good it plays pretty good now the one i've been playing now is the one with the silver bell yeah that's a mark 6-2 george talked a lot about the importance of playing in all 12 keys but i really loved hearing about his memphis roots and the old days playing in blues bands but even back in the day i was playing in the keys and then funny keys because we'd be in the country and the pianos be a flat a tone flat so i'd have to instead of playing and g on a saxophone i was playing an f shot so that's how i began to play in those other keys the other player could have just played in another key too he could have played but yeah but they didn't want to do that see what were some of those gigs like oh in the country blues that's all you playing country blues i play with some of them guys like uh howling wolf yeah and uh muddy waters yeah not a lot of courts no cards at all you know dominic dominic sevens and maybe occasional miner but uh not not any you know no raised knights and flooded fists none of that they didn't do that all they did was like dominant seven chords dominant knight they'd like to use the ninth on them guitars you know perhaps my favorite moment was when george explained and demonstrated his approach to playing the blues in different musical contexts when you were playing with howlin wolf and muddy waters you weren't playing like uh bird stuff no no [Music] what i would probably play it was one resolution there on the blues where you play the the the five on the blues and then you go back to the four and then come back to the one right you know right that's the old turnaround blues that's what i'm talking about you play that made a 5 and then you go back to the 4. oh [Music] [Music] i just played [Music] and then not even a minute i wouldn't even do that [Music] oh [Music] that's how i would play the blues with those guys that's the message that's memphis blues you know muddy waters howling wolf james cotton all those blues guys i just played you know what carter would would meant for slim too i played because i'm on one of his records he never paid me for it but it's amazing how george coleman went from first picking up a saxophone to playing with max roach just a few short years later so i had to ask him what he practiced in order to get to that level so quickly well my favorite thing is faculty cherokee through the keys going up chromatically you play a lot of fast tempos too yeah yeah well that's the way i used to practice no no no metronome you know my metronome was built inside me just kick off the tempo [Music] after i really got out there i started playing with the fast boys like max roach you couldn't get no faster than him [Music] food and you could play cherokee we played just one of those things up temple which was quite a challenge [Music] j that that that that g-sharp work yeah whatever you did oh yeah oh it's good i told you a couple tunes and then another tune that i would play through the keys would be mike the knife oh yeah [Music] if you play cherokee or black and nice to all the keys you get probably every possible interval it all amounts to you being able to hear whatever you needed to play technically what i'm not even thinking about it you know and if you miss it that's okay you go back and and and you know you ever take lines particular lines through all the keys as well [Music] a recurring theme in great music is a strong connection to the blues man it's hard to play man yeah yeah sure it's amazing how those guys didn't play they played up tempo you know bird probably playing this stuff you know and george coleman too though well you know i'm just because i was listening to the name jay i'm listening i've been listening to those guys so when i was playing the blues in the country hadn't been playing for maybe a couple of years i was listening to bird or the sunny stick i was listening to that one i recorded some of you with bb king when you were like 17 years old oh yeah well i woke up this morning yeah yeah that's a house rocker that's what we call up that rocks the house that's the people in the music well you know i went way back i used to listen to uh louis jordan that was my boy louis jordan so it's great to be able to take that old stuff and then blues and the memphis out and then mix it with the more modern well you know i had some guys back there during that date i had some of the yellow big guys some guys played the old uh teddy wilson style you know and then there was some guys that played bud powell so i had the best of both worlds so i used to listen to both of them so i know if it was a c7 whatever one guy would play a g minor c seven or a flat minor d flat cell see the bebop changed the harmony around a lot you know here comes right here come on in man george how you doing i'm doing pretty good my ball we got to do another runs for something i keep forgetting that d flat g on the bridge that's perfect see [Music] always comes up with the best [Music] i was wrong i got it wrong [Music] see that's not nice he heard i was a fourth off and he called me on it harold said you got to sit in with george i'll give you a hint this one was a junior in college i could barely play a b flight blues he said i'll give you a hint he likes to play cherokee and g first night i was sitting there with my horn in the case and george didn't call me up and i thought well i guess he doesn't want me to play so maybe called me and said you're an idiot he's not gonna ask you to play you better take it out so i'm terrified poop in my pants take the horn out and i think he was playing dedicated to you he just pointed at me on the bridge and i didn't know it but luckily one note i hit was correct so i sort of made it through that and then he started playing cherokee and i forgot what harold said he played a section and he left me on the bridge and i went nah wrong during my visit with george coleman he played the saxophone a lot and one thing i noticed that he was always thinking of and playing a tune never just noodling around he's an extremely kind and generous man who is grossly underrated in the saxophone hierarchy i've been checking out a lot more george coleman recordings lately and i strongly recommend that you do the same don't sleep on george coleman his playing is right up there among the very best of all time i hope you got some valuable insights and a little bit of history from this video i'm so grateful to george coleman for inviting us into his home and sharing his knowledge and experience with us this was truly a special treat for the saxophone world a big thank you to eric alexander who set the whole thing up be sure to check out eric's course 21 major key explorations which you can get over at bettersacks.com thank you so much for watching this video and i'll see you soon in the next one if i was in the section man i would want to play i would want to play this one what a sound jake [Music] [Music]

Channel: Better Sax

Views: 67,198

Rating: 4.9640203 out of 5

Keywords: bettersax, better sax, jay metcalf, saxophone, sax, sax lessons, learn saxophone, how to play sax, alto sax, tenor sax, sax player, sax teacher, george coleman, jazz master, miles davis, herbie hancock, jazz legend, tenor saxophone, interview george coleman, jazz saxophone

Id: Eliiu6PY8-w

Length: 17min 11sec (1031 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 07 2021